The Scans Daily Thing

[michaelpaciocco]

At this point, if you don't know about it, just hop over to Kirk's LJ.

Just a few quick thoughts:
-Fan Entitlement vs. Creator Entitlement = Fun to watch
-The people who keep saying "with all the material there's no reason to buy the book!". Congrats, you won. I just wonder how many more people are going to be torrenting their comics now because of the ill will towards the Big Two and what's happened here, because I doubt that it will increase sales.
-Disclaimer - next to the monthly solicits and the general blogosphere, S_D was a major source of materials for posters. So, oh well, slight loss. I've got a folder with 300+ images I haven't made into posters, so I should be good for a while.
- If Peter David takes the fall for this (rightfully or wrongfully), it'll probably be his death knell for his run with the Big Two.
- The upshot the way I see it? The companies that did benefit from Scans daily that aren't the Big Two might try to take advantage of this and hopefully, this will be another nail in Marvel/DC's coffin. And for that, I raise my glass: Thanks for making yourself seem less relevant.

Cheers,

Michael

[paulpogue]

I seriously doubt this is going to affect PAD's career one way or another; there aren't a lot of people in power at the Big Two who are that strongly in favor of Scans_Daily that they're going to blackball him for this. And even if every SD reader in the world boycotted PAD's comics, I doubt it would make a severe enough dent in his sales.

I'm rather interested in seeing how it plays out with this whole mess pushing people towards just plain torrenting comics.

[michaelpaciocco]

I wasn't trying to imply a blackballing of PAD; I'm just saying that he's going to notice a noticeable sales dip because he'll lose fans over this, and X-Factor isn't a high-seller to begin with.

I agree with you about torrenting; the message I'm hearing is "Hey, if you want to treat us like pirates for even looking at one page you don't want us to look at, we might as well go the distance."

[ksennin]

Just reposting what I posted at Kirk's livejournal:

"I did not have any fandom experiences growing up. I relocated from Spain to Honduras, Central America, at age 7, carrying a love of reading in general and comics in particular. I found NO ONE to share those interests at a poor, backward 3rd world nation. So I wondered often how it would be to sit with friends and share comics and chat, boast, flame, and talk crap about the things we loved. I got married and nearly grew up still wondering. There remains a shortage of geeks around here for some reasons.

Then I discovered online fandom. It was a bit late, but not too late. SCANS DAILY was the latest, and most dependably entertaining of those substitutes for the lack of fellow geeks in my life. Sometimes the talk got crazy, or foolish, or even scary. But I imagined those idealized meetings with geeky friends would have been no different. And how did we share comics! Comics I had little access to in a country without a single comic book store at all! How many times I was driven to amazon.com as a result!

And now, it is gone. Not unexpected, but not easy to take, either.

I understand Peter David's position, and the possible reasons for his less than lenient actions. But the guy just helped take away that fun gathering of fellow geeks, because he did not like the crap spilled, and the sharing of comics. Excuse me if I am not fond of him anymore. He should go team up with the old lady who would not return the balls that landed on her yard."

I state for the record that I don't agree personally with the accepted aggressiveness of online interaction, or the snarky attitudes taken for granted. I have found myself falling into those patterns at times, and have regreted my words in almost every case. Not because of content, but because of delivery. And it is all about delivery.
But I try not to be a nazi about it, either. I consider Kbox a good friend, and man, can he go foaming at the mouth on the issues he feels about. The same about many others. I would try to do it different, but that is just me. And I think tolerance should also include being tolerant of politeness patterns different from our own. I think I even read a Supergirl comic about that, involving the right of someone to voice hate speech. Ironically, it was written by Peter David.

I know PD had the legal rights, and maybe the rights of the offended on his side. Still, the community was a place held behind various warnings, of content and tone, and it was a fannish community. A place to speak crap about things we like with childish fervor. What did he expect? He was the old man punishing kids for speaking with a potty mouth. And THAT works SOOOOO well.

[jensaltmann]

I also didn't have any fandom to interact with when I was young. My first encounters with fans were when I managed to attend some cons. Face-to-face, those encounters were positive.

It's the encounters with online fans which make me want to disassociate with these kinds of people. "Fans are like that, I'm not like that nor do I want to be, so I don't interact with them."

Simple as that, really. I have anger management issues as well, but I still hold myself to certain standards (the least of which is, you're only entitled to behave like a 10 year old if you are a 10 year old).

Do I expect others to live up to my standards? Well, on the one hand, I believe it is a more valid standard than what those fannish drama queens exhibit, whose standard seems to be, "I can say whatever I like about whoever I want, so long as they don't find out and the real me can't be associated with it."
Which, from my observations, appears to be the baseline of online fandom interaction. I call that cowardice.

Anyway. As I said, do I expect others to meet my standards of good manners? Heck, even I don't always manage to. But generally speaking, I do not want to interact with people who think that "die in a fire" is an acceptable social interaction. So I stay away from the places where such people gather.

I'm still here, BTW, because here the interaction is adult and sensible and well-mannered, with Kirk and Jesse being the only exceptions -- and even Jesse has more class than "die of AIDS" pronoucements. If this board were different, if it were like the better-known comics forums out there, I wouldn't be here.

Mar 2, 2009 11:50:50 GMT -8 ksennin said:

I know PD had the legal rights, and maybe the rights of the offended on his side. Still, the community was a place held behind various warnings, of content and tone, and it was a fannish community. A place to speak crap about things we like with childish fervor. What did he expect? He was the old man punishing kids for speaking with a potty mouth. And THAT works SOOOOO well.

Actually, my evaluation of PAD's behavior in this matter (based on second hand knowledge, so take this for all it's worth), is more that he encountered people who behaved like petulant prepubescents and decided to interact with them on their level.

[jbhelfrich]

Also, ironically, since it's WFH, PAD has no legal rights. He could conceivably be making residuals off of a theoretical TPB, but he has no legal control of the content.

[jarddavis]

A.) Where is Kirk's livejournal?

B.) Am I to understand Marvel took legal action against Scans Daily for posting their artwork without permission from Marvel itself, and people are angry about this?

C.) Is anyone really that surprised?

D.) If that is the case, you do realize Marvel is completely in the right, correct?

Yeah, I can hear the yells loudly now but unfortunately, it's a bad argument to begin with. If it were JK Rowling, nobody would be complaining. And to be honest, it WAS JK Rowling not so very long ago in the exact same predicament, and nobody complained.

Is it because Marvel has angered all of us lately with poor choices in business and editorial? If it is, then it shouldn't be. Is it because Marvel is big corporation? If it is than it shouldn't be.

And I might even be sympathetic to it, if it wasn't for the fact that the Rocky Mountain News just closed down 47 days shy of it's 150th birthday because no one is buying the paper anymore. Why do so when you can get your news on line for free?

Do you really think comics are immune to that as well?

[K-Box]

My LJ is here:

box-in-the-box.livejournal.com

And there are certain issues you're not aware of, Jard.

First is that both Marvel and LJ were well aware of scans_daily for YEARS before it closed. Countless online news sites linked to posts on that comm on a regular (in several cases, even on a DAILY) basis, and at least a dozen regular Marvel writers and artists were longtime posters on the comm - some to engage other posters in flame wars (Dan Slott), some to engage the fans in interesting conversations and drum up support for their work (Gail Simone), and more than a few to do both of the above (Warren Ellis). Moreover, while LJ NOW claims that scans_daily was in violation of their terms of service ALL ALONG, scans_daily was ALWAYS very open about its purpose, to the point of putting it in its USER PROFILE, and LJ apparently had no PREVIOUS problems with the comm, as evidenced by the fact that LJ made scans_daily a FEATURED SITE on at least one occasion.

And you apparently missed the fact that there was, in fact, a HUGE contingent of fandom that DID complain about J.K. Rowling doing "the same thing," except that it's 100-percent wrong to claim that it's "the same thing" to a) distribute a deliberately limited (and moderator-enforced) number of sample images from a given comic for free online and b) appropriate another author's works and sell them FOR PROFIT, especially when several comic book writers (Simone, Ellis, and yes, even Kurt "The Man Who Is Almost Always Correct" Busiek) credit scans_daily with ADDING to the sales of their works.

AND, speaking as someone who actually WORKS at a newspaper, any newspaper that gets "put out of business" by the Internet was going to die anyway, because SUBSCRIPTIONS haven't been enough to keep newspapers profitable for YEARS, since what REALLY keeps newspapers afloat anymore is ADVERTISING, which is why even small-town local newspapers like mine now regard their print editions as VESTIGIAL APPENDAGES, that we literally GIVE AWAY FOR FREE, because what matters is not how many people BUY the newspaper, but how many people SEE it, and if a newspaper does both a free print distribution and a WEB SITE, like the ones that I work for, then YOU'RE NOT IN COMPETITION WITH THE INTERNET, because you're RELYING on the Internet instead.

Check the comments thread of ANY article about the shutdown of scans_daily, and YOU'LL LOSE COUNT of the number of posters who point out that they STARTED buying any number of comic book titles BECAUSE THEY GOT A FREE TASTE FIRST on scans_daily. This is EXACTLY like file-sharing in the music industry, because what's LEGAL has absolutely nothing to do with what's RIGHT here, either in a business sense OR in a moral sense.

[liliaeth]

Mar 3, 2009 2:34:10 GMT -8 jensaltmann said:

Actually, my evaluation of PAD's behavior in this matter (based on second hand knowledge, so take this for all it's worth), is more that he encountered people who behaved like petulant prepubescents and decided to interact with them on their level.

No, having seen the actual conversation between the posters at Scans Daily and Peter David, I have to say that it's basically a guy overreacting, being utterly condescending and then acting shocked when people call him on it. At one point the man almost literally said something along the lines of: "You have to stop looking at everything through feminist lenses.", and told another poster that he wasn't going to give any credit to her comments, because of her age.

The fact is that the posters made sensible and well stated criticisme about the issue. Aside of one moment of Kali saying that PAD should DIAF, and this stated before PAD himself came upon the thread, after which she apologized and tried to make her point in a sane and rational manner. (he pretty much dismissed her right off, without even bothering to read her response to him, because of a four letter abbreviation.

Need to go refind Kali's post where she posted a screencap of the convo in question.

Edit: Here's a link to Kali's post.

kali921.livejournal.com/288621.html

[jensaltmann]

Well, hopefully those links are useful to someone. Me? I don't care enough either way to want to waste more of my time on this. As I said, second-hand knowledge implies that nobody involved covered themselves in glory.

What I remember from those other posts on Kirk's LJ (when this was still top news, and I had less work to do) was that Kali921 wished death on Peter David and was shocked when she got caught talking trash by the person she was talking trash about.

Or, to put it differently:

"it's basically a (gal) overreacting, being utterly condescending and then acting shocked when (the person she condescended about caught her doing it)."

Juvenile behavior.

That doesn't excuse PAD's (by all accounts) equally juvenile behavior. On anything I mod, they would both have been banned.

But then, I'm a proponent of not saying anything about anyone behind their backs that I wouldn't say to their faces. *And* I stand by what I say with my name, not some anonymous internet handle. I take responsibility for what I say.

[jarddavis]

"And there are certain issues you're not aware of, Jard."

There are a lot of things I'm not aware of which is why I asked to see the original article.

"First is that both Marvel and LJ were well aware of scans_daily for YEARS before it closed. Countless online news sites linked to posts on that comm on a regular (in several cases, even on a DAILY) basis, and at least a dozen regular Marvel writers and artists were longtime posters on the comm - some to engage other posters in flame wars (Dan Slott), some to engage the fans in interesting conversations and drum up support for their work (Gail Simone), and more than a few to do both of the above (Warren Ellis). Moreover, while LJ NOW claims that scans_daily was in violation of their terms of service ALL ALONG, scans_daily was ALWAYS very open about its purpose, to the point of putting it in its USER PROFILE, and LJ apparently had no PREVIOUS problems with the comm, as evidenced by the fact that LJ made scans_daily a FEATURED SITE on at least one occasion."

They got away with it for awhile. That's all. It doesn't make it any less illeagal or right because they got away with it and yes, LJ now has to cover their own asses. Monumentally stupide as it may have been to go after the site because of the impression said action gave the comics community, it doesn't change the fact that what scans daily did was in fact illeagal.

Marvel has done this before. Anyone remember Wolverroach? S'ym? Cease and desist order to Dave Sim? Of course at the time they were publishing Royal Roy, Squadron Supreme... This is not a company known for makeing smart decisions that help their standing in the community.

"And you apparently missed the fact that there was, in fact, a HUGE contingent of fandom that DID complain about J.K. Rowling doing "the same thing," except that it's 100-percent wrong to claim that it's "the same thing" to a) distribute a deliberately limited (and moderator-enforced) number of sample images from a given comic for free online and b) appropriate another author's works and sell them FOR PROFIT, especially when several comic book writers (Simone, Ellis, and yes, even Kurt "The Man Who Is Almost Always Correct" Busiek) credit scans_daily with ADDING to the sales of their works."

As I understand it, and no I have not read the article yet, but will when I get home, PAD is upset because SD spoiled his X-Factor storyline, which makes this exactly like JK Rowling's troubles in trying to keep a lid on the last two Potter books. And no one complained when she did that. I saw not one single online complaint, so if people did, then by all means, provide a source. BUt you're still missing the point. THey are not wrong to be angry about that. They have every right to be angry about that. Especially if it's happened more than once that major storyline's can be spoiled that way.

Again, old Marvel history rears it's ugly head. Denny O'Neil. Iron Man. West Coast Avengers. Jim Shooter.

"AND, speaking as someone who actually WORKS at a newspaper, any newspaper that gets "put out of business" by the Internet was going to die anyway, because SUBSCRIPTIONS haven't been enough to keep newspapers profitable for YEARS, since what REALLY keeps newspapers afloat anymore is ADVERTISING, which is why even small-town local newspapers like mine now regard their print editions as VESTIGIAL APPENDAGES, that we literally GIVE AWAY FOR FREE, because what matters is not how many people BUY the newspaper, but how many people SEE it, and if a newspaper does both a free print distribution and a WEB SITE, like the ones that I work for, then YOU'RE NOT IN COMPETITION WITH THE INTERNET, because you're RELYING on the Internet instead."

And if you're not buying your newspaper because you can get your news for free online, so much for the advertising income because... well, you're not looking at the ads. I understand the economics behind the thing, Kirk.

"Check the comments thread of ANY article about the shutdown of scans_daily, and YOU'LL LOSE COUNT of the number of posters who point out that they STARTED buying any number of comic book titles BECAUSE THEY GOT A FREE TASTE FIRST on scans_daily. This is EXACTLY like file-sharing in the music industry, because what's LEGAL has absolutely nothing to do with what's RIGHT here, either in a business sense OR in a moral sense."

Okay. What's morally right then? Does not Peter David have a right to write his story without someone spoiling it for his fans? Do the fans who follow his work have the right not to have the story spoiled for them? According to your argument, I had every right in the world to come out of Empire Strikes Back, yell out "Vader is Luke's Dad!" to my best friend who was waiting in line to see the movie... with 500 other people also waiting to see it for the first time.

[liliaeth]

Mar 11, 2009 10:55:04 GMT -8 jarddavis said:

Okay. What's morally right then? Does not Peter David have a right to write his story without someone spoiling it for his fans? Do the fans who follow his work have the right not to have the story spoiled for them? According to your argument, I had every right in the world to come out of Empire Strikes Back, yell out "Vader is Luke's Dad!" to my best friend who was waiting in line to see the movie... with 500 other people also waiting to see it for the first time.

Do you know how livejournal works? I'm just wondering, because one thing with livejournal, is that posts can be put behind a cut. That means, esp. in coms like scans daily, that anything that even approaches the idea of being a spoiler, was hidden from sight from any fan who didn't want to see it.

If people didn't want to be spoiled, they wouldn't have been, because all they had to do, was not click the cut.

[jessebaker]

Okay. What's morally right then? Does not Peter David have a right to write his story without someone spoiling it for his fans? Do the fans who follow his work have the right not to have the story spoiled for them? According to your argument, I had every right in the world to come out of Empire Strikes Back, yell out "Vader is Luke's Dad!" to my best friend who was waiting in line to see the movie... with 500 other people also waiting to see it for the first time.

Well there is the inner logic that the "spoilers" were for

1. A really really shitty plot twist (Siren's baby is a dupe of Jamie's and is instantly reabsorbed into him, as if to say PAD decided at the last minute NOT TO make Multiple Man a dad)

2. Layla Miller returning from the future as an adult, something ANYONE AND EVERYONE saw coming, as soon as she and Jamie ended up in the future back in Messiah Complex.

The former was a shit plotline that deserved to be spoiled because it's dumb, insulting to the intelligence of the readers, and pretty vile when you consider the implications for Siren carrying a baby only to have it be destroyed as soon as it's out of it's womb. The later is something that you'd think PAD WOULD want spoiled, if only because it would fucking let people know Layla's back given the utterly low key nature of Layla's return.

PAD over-reacted. And really, should he not be glad that at least people are talking about the book and it's storylines and their twists? Especially with the way X-Factor has rapidly slid down the ladder of importance this last year and a half, after Messiah Complex?

[K-Box]

Mar 11, 2009 10:55:04 GMT -8 jarddavis said:

[...] JK Rowling's troubles in trying to keep a lid on the last two Potter books. And no one complained when she did that. I saw not one single online complaint, so if people did, then by all means, provide a source.

Ah, my mistake. I actually thought you were referring to a DIFFERENT J.K. Rowling copyright controversy. But I'll address this one below anyway.

Mar 11, 2009 10:55:04 GMT -8 jarddavis said:

And if you're not buying your newspaper because you can get your news for free online, so much for the advertising income because... well, you're not looking at the ads. I understand the economics behind the thing, Kirk.

No, you obviously don't, because if you distribute your newspaper to everyone within a certain geographic area for free, rather than just distributing it to the people who would be willing to pay subscription fees for it, than you INCREASE the number of people who see the paper, AND its ads, which means that you can charge advertisers MORE MONEY to place ads in your paper, just as our papers have done. Also, whatever you might think of the effectiveness of online ads, the fact remains that advertisers still PAY MONEY for them, and even our small-town local newspapers' Web sites have advertisers, both regional and beyond, who pay us money to place their ads on our sites, because with every page hit, they can keep EXACT count of how many times people see their ads online.

Come on, Jard; you should know better than this.

Mar 11, 2009 10:55:04 GMT -8 jarddavis said:

Okay. What's morally right then? Does not Peter David have a right to write his story without someone spoiling it for his fans? Do the fans who follow his work have the right not to have the story spoiled for them? According to your argument, I had every right in the world to come out of Empire Strikes Back, yell out "Vader is Luke's Dad!" to my best friend who was waiting in line to see the movie... with 500 other people also waiting to see it for the first time.

I'm sorry, but your analogy is bullshit. Every post on scans_daily placed spoilers BEHIND A CUT, with a CLEARLY-MARKED SPOILER-TAG. That is IN NO WAY WHATSOEVER similar to shouting the ending to a movie to the people who are waiting in line to go see it, because in order to see the spoilers on scans_daily, you had to CHOOSE to click the LJ-cut and READ what the spoilers were. If you have such a weak willpower that you're going to blame SOMEONE ELSE for "spoiling" a story for you, when IT COULDN'T BE EASIER to AVOID those spoilers, then you DESERVE to be spoiled. In fact, let me go back to this ...

Mar 11, 2009 10:55:04 GMT -8 jarddavis said:

Does not Peter David have a right to write his story without someone spoiling it for his fans?

When you put it that way? No, he fucking doesn't, because HIS standard of "not spoiling it" means that NO details should be soilicited about ANY of his stories in the previews (he flat-out stated this in a Newsarama interview, in which he refused to answer pretty much every single question, including, "So, WHY should people READ this book, then?"), and moreover, his standard (and yours) of "not spoiling it" seems to be that even posters on message board threads WITH SPOILER-WARNING TAGS shouldn't be allowed to talk about the details of a story, in which case, you might as well shut down every fucking forum on the Internet, INCLUDING OURS, right now. This was NOT somebody SPAMMING people with UNSOLICITED information where they COULDN'T AVOID seeing it. This was somebody saying, "Hey, if you WANT spoilers, click here, but if you DON'T want spoilers, DON'T click here!" If we apply this to real life, as you tried to do, the ACTUAL comparison would be if you told kids in a cafeteria that they couldn't talk to the people sitting at their lunch table about a movie that they'd just seen, because that somehow "violates" the "rights" of the moviemakers. If Peter David actually regards that as a "right," to silence conversation that he doesn't like, then he can go fuck himself, and I WOULD say that to his face, because that's a MORALLY WRONG position on his part, and more importantly, it's IMPOSSIBLE TO ENFORCE.

[jarddavis]

Mar 11, 2009 11:28:10 GMT -8 liliaeth said:

If people didn't want to be spoiled, they wouldn't have been, because all they had to do, was not click the cut.

Which if people followed that protocol, that would be great. But people tend to share things with their friends around the internet.